Awakening a 10,000x Skill Proficiency Multiplier in the Apocalypse

”Times five hundred,” he whispered.

BOOM!

The sheer, catastrophic spike in gravitational mass hit the ancient stone structure like an invisible asteroid. The massive ziggurat was instantly, violently flattened into a two-dimensional pancake of crushed rock and liquefied reptilian flesh.

SQUELCH! CRUNCH!

The screaming was cut off in a microsecond.

The heavy stone steps, the guards, and the arrogant Warlord were entirely pulverized into a thick, bloody paste that sank rapidly into the swamp water.

Sebastian walked up to the edge of the newly formed crater. He reached his hand down into the bubbling mud, his fingers bypassing the physical matter to grab the foundational code of the server itself.

He pulled.

SHLUCK!

The green World Core came free with a sickening tearing sound. The sky above the swamp instantly shattered into gray wireframes. The remaining trees dissolved into floating pixels.

Sebastian stepped backward into a freshly opened Juncture portal, leaving the server to collapse into nothingness behind him.

[Raw Source Code Extracted: 2,700,000 Units]

[Total: 5,200,000 / 10,000,000]

Ten minutes later, Sebastian dropped out of the void and crashed heavily onto the polished marble floor of a lavish, floating palace.

[Target: Server 889 - The Gilded Cage]

This server was a high-fantasy nightmare ruled by a cabal of Elven elites who had hoarded all the clean mana, leaving the surface world to burn. The Guild Master, a Level 65 High Elf wearing robes of spun gold, dropped his crystal wine glass in absolute shock as Sebastian materialized in the center of his throne room.

”Guards! Intruder!” the Elf shrieked, raising a hand glowing with deadly arcanefire.

”Eviction notice, pointy,” Sebastian deadpanned.

He didn’t use gravity this time. He just used his [Heavenly Steps] to fold space, instantly teleporting directly in front of the Elf. Before the Guild Master could cast his spell, Sebastian grabbed him by the throat, lifted him into the air, and slammed him down onto the heavy crystal throne with bone-shattering force.

CRACK!

The Elf’s spine snapped, his health bar deleting instantly. Sebastian didn’t even look at the corpse. He plunged his hand directly into the glowing, decorative fountain behind the throne, wrapping his fingers around the hidden blue World Core powering the palace.

”Mine,” Sebastian grunted, ripping it free.

The floating palace immediately lost its anti-gravity magic. It plummeted toward the burning earth below as Sebastian stepped casually back into the void.

[Raw Source Code Extracted: 2,400,000 Units]

[Total: 7,600,000 / 10,000,000]

The physical toll of rapidly jumping between servers and casually deploying reality-breaking laws was staggering. Sebastian’s biological meat-suit was screaming. His muscles burned with a fiery, lactic acid ache that completely ignored his Demigod stats.

His nose was bleeding a steady stream of red, and his vision frequently swam with bursts of green static.

”One more,” he wheezed, floating in the Juncture and pulling up his map. ”Just one more.”

He selected a dark, crimson orb.

[Target: Server 901 - The Ash Wastes]

He hit the transit button.

He landed heavily on a rolling dune of pitch-black sand. The heat was immense, but his [Thermal Immunity] batted it away.

Server 901 was entirely dead. There were no players left. There were no cities.

It was just an endless ocean of black ash.

And burrowing beneath that ash was a Level 70 Void Sandworm, a massive, horrific beast that had completely consumed the planet’s remaining data.

The ground beneath Sebastian violently trembled. A mouth the size of a football stadium, lined with thousands of spinning, jagged teeth, erupted from the sand directly beneath him.

”I really don’t have the patience for a boss fight right now,” Sebastian sighed.

He just pointed his hand straight down into the gaping, roaring maw of the beast.

[Conceptual Law Activated: Reality Overwrite]

”Delete.”

POP!

A massive, perfectly spherical void of absolute nothingness appeared directly in the center of the Sandworm’s throat. The erasure ignored the monster’s armor, its health pool, and its sheer size. The beast’s head was cleanly, flawlessly bisected.

SQUELCH.

The massive worm collapsed, its body raining down upon the black dunes in chunks of rotting, purple meat.

Sebastian dropped down into the severed neck cavity. He waded through the steaming, corrosive blood, entirely unbothered by the gore, until he found the glowing red World Core lodged in the monster’s digestive tract.

He yanked it free.

[Raw Source Code Extracted: 2,800,000 Units]

[Total: 10,400,000 / 10,000,000]

[Requirement Met. Law Synthesis Available.]

”Finally,” Sebastian coughed, his chest heaving as he stared at the glowing prompt.

He had the fuel. He had the ten million units of foundational code.

As he prepared to open a transit portal back to Outpost Rust, his intercepted comm-link crackled to life. It was picking up the open, unencrypted radio chatter of the Juncture scavengers operating in the nearby dead zones.

”Did you see the telemetry on 889?!” a panicked, static-filled voice yelled over the radio. ”The whole server just went dark!

Popped off the grid in seconds!” ”It’s not just 889! Server 519 and 404 are gone too!” another scavenger shrieked.

”Something is out there! The scanners aren’t picking up a Void Fleet. It’s a single entity! A massive, condensed anomaly!”

”They’re calling it the World Eater,” a third voice whispered, pure terror leaking through the audio feed. ”A glitch that just swallows reality. The Saints are losing their minds.

They just put a three-planet bounty on its head!”

Sebastian stood in the dying ash of Server 901, his black coat soaked in the blood of four different worlds. He listened to the terrified whispers of the multiverse.

He didn’t feel remorse. He didn’t feel the heavy, moral burden of deleting billions of lines of code and the lives attached to them.

He felt an unyielding satisfaction of a man who had completely rigged the game in his favor.

”Good,” Sebastian smirked, a dark, terrifying expression. ”Let them be terrified.”

He tapped his interface. ”Initiate transit.

Destination: Outpost Rust.”

It was time to go home and write a new law of physics.

The heavy steel blast doors of Corbin’s underground bunker hissed open.

Sebastian stepped inside, his heavy boots leaving thick, bloody footprints on the concrete floor. He looked like absolute, walking death. His black leather coat was shredded, his face was pale and drawn, and the silver light in his eyes was dim, flickering with sheer, unadulterated exhaustion.

He had just murdered four planets in the span of two hours.

Gwen and Corbin were standing by the central tactical table. They both froze, staring at the ragged, blood-soaked Drifter.

”By the First Maker,” Corbin whispered, his hands trembling as he took in the sheer volume of raw, condensed data practically radiating off Sebastian’s body. ”You actually did it. You harvested them.”

”Ten million units,” Sebastian grunted, his voice a hoarse, metallic rasp. He walked over to the table and heavily dumped the four glowing, pulsing World Cores onto the scarred mahogany.

THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD.

The ambient mana in the bunker spiked so violently that the overhead lights shattered, plunging the room into the dim, emergency red glow of the backup generators.

”Holy shit,” Gwen breathed, taking a cautious step back. She kept her hands far away from her kinetic pistols. ”You are a walking apocalypse, Seattle.”

”I’m a tired guy who needs a nap,” Sebastian corrected, rubbing the bridge of his nose. The migraine behind his eyes felt like a physical ice pick. ”The system is processing the Source Code. The Synthesis module is unlocked. But if I try to write a new Conceptual Law right now, my physical brain will literally melt out of my ears.”

He pointed a bloody finger at the code-smith.

”Corbin. Lock the doors. Do not let anyone in.

I need exactly one hour of sleep to let my biological synchronization stabilize the data load.”

”Y-yes, Boss! Locked down tight!” Corbin squeaked, frantically typing at his console.

”The heavy-borgs outside are on maximum alert!”

Sebastian didn’t wait for reassurance. He walked past them, heading for the small, cramped back room of the bunker that served as Corbin’s meager living quarters. He pushed the door open, collapsed onto the tiny, lumpy cot, and was unconscious before his head even hit the stained pillow.

While the Sovereign of Laws slept, the Juncture moved.

Far above the deep, irradiated sewer tunnels of Outpost Rust, the neon-drenched slums were bustling with their usual, chaotic trade.

Scavengers haggled over rusted iron, and low-level thugs prowled the alleyways looking for easy marks.

Walking through the thick, purple smog of the market district were five figures.

To the casual observer, they looked like standard, pathetic slum merchants. They wore heavily patched, filthy cloaks. They walked with hunched, subservient postures, keeping their heads down and their hands tucked into their sleeves.

But their internal UI told a completely different story.

[Status: Masquerade Artifact Active.]

[Optical Camouflage: 100%]

[Identity Spoofing: Level 5 Slum Merchant]

They were the Silver Hands. They were an elite, Level 80 assassin squad originating from the Outer Servers, hand-picked and personally dispatched by Saint Grigori and Saint Jin.